Monthly Archives: August 2010

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Tiger last week. “I don’t think you ever — you don’t ever go into a marriage looking to get divorced. That’s the thing. That’s why it is sad.” Maybe statements like that have prevented me from ever being a Tiger guy even though we grew up playing golf in the same home town. On the surface it’s impossible to disagree with his statement, but let’s dig a little deeper shall we. It’s been reported Tiger had a prenup. Why have a prenup if the possibility of divorce hasn’t at least crossed your mind?

And then here’s what appears to have happened. He married a progressive, zero-tolerance, self-confident, shall we say modern woman. Next he had an affair, then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another (alright I’m just going to copy and paste) and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another,and then another, and then another, and then he got caught and his goal of having more affairs than Nicklaus has majors was down the drain.

Here’s what I would have asked Tiger had I been working at the divorce press conference. “So after affair seven, nine, thirteen, you never thought ‘If Elin ever finds out what I’ve been up to, this marriage may be in trouble.’?”

In related news (another golfer with Stanford ties), I saw a Michelle Wie “interview” after the second round of the Canadian Open which she was leading. All I could think was how on earth did she get into Punahou and Stanford? Top ten most vapid and vacuous sports interview of all time. And it’s not easy getting on that list. Stanford degrees plummeted in value over the excruciating 90 seconds. Mamas, don’t let your children become Stanford. . . golfers.

What forms will the pushback against alternative report cards likely take? Several. First, many middle aged and older people will argue “Traditional report cards worked just fine for us back in the day. My friends and I turned out okay.” Change is threatening. “Was my education incomplete/imperfect?”

Schools should be continually reinventing themselves to better meet the needs of students who must adapt to a rapidly changing world. Reformers should be mindful that propositions like mine will make many older people defensive, but they should not let that dynamic thwart them from making the necessary changes.

Second, the families of students who have been most successful within the traditional reporting system will protest. Good grades are way of maintaining one’s privilege in an intensely stratified society. Alternative report cards should be designed so that they can’t be easily co-opted by the academically privileged. Probably easier said than done.

Third, teachers will most likely protest the additional time that will be required to write individual report cards. Calculating grades take secondary teachers a long time, but these narrative report cards, if done thoroughly and thoughtfully, will take even longer. We need to attract teachers who embrace the additional time as a worthwhile trade-off for providing substantive information that makes teaching and learning much more meaningful. How to do that probably requires another series at another time.

How might this type of alternative report card revitalize teaching and learning? For starters, it would require teachers to clearly distinguish in writing between undeveloped and highly developed skills, sensibilities, and personal attributes and also to thoroughly and thoughtfully place students on related continua.

The skills I’ve highlighted would also promote interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

It would benefit traditional “A” students by clearly communicating that everyone has room for improvement, that in fact, we never arrive at total mastery of any content, set of skills, or sensibilities.

It would also benefit students whose natural strengths don’t align well with schools’ traditional emphasis on math and English/Language Arts. The report cards would better communicate that academic excellence is a life-long endeavor that takes many forms.

What form will the pushback against report cards like this likely take? Tomorrow’s conclusion.

Why have grade-based report cards stood the test of time with hardly any variation despite radical changes in the world more generally? What purposes do grade-based report cards serve?

Grade-based reports cards have proven so resilient because they are a sorting mechanism. They enable teachers, counselors, and coaches to quickly and simply categorize very large numbers of students and slice and dice in terms of extracurricular and graduation eligibility. Similarly, they enable college admission officials to quickly and simply categorize large numbers of students and slice and dice in terms of their relative value especially when compared to something like narrative summaries of each individual’s strengths and next steps.

But as a result of endemic cheating that takes place in secondary schools grades are not nearly as indicative of meaningful academic achievement as nearly everyone thinks.

Listen to secondary students who have been labelled successful as a result of receiving good grades. If honest, many of them will tell you that they didn’t earn them. Instead, they learned to “do school” by cutting corners whether copying one another’s homework, manipulating teachers to lower their expectations and/or routinely extend deadlines, and cheating on exams. In hindsight they often express regret and confess to remembering little from their coursework. They regret that their writing, thinking, and oral communication skills aren’t more fully developed.

If grade-based report cards were to be radically redesigned, how might teaching and learning be revitalized? Answering this question actually first requires asking what might an updated, new and improved report card look like?

It would prioritize skill development, it might incorporate on and off-campus extracurricular activities, it would rest on narrative statements of each student’s distinctive strengths and most important next steps, and it would incorporate some degree of self-assessment. What skills? Here’s five: 1) the ability to process large amounts of information and distinguish between what’s most important and what’s least important; 2) the ability to synthesize seemingly disparate information; 3) the ability to evaluate the relative accuracy and objectivity of television programming, internet websites, digital images, and other multimedia content; 4) the ability to write and speak clearly, insightfully, and persuasively; and 5) the ability to understand a topic or issue from another person or group’s point of view. It would also incorporate important sensibilities and personal attributes including small group smarts, cross-cultural understanding, resilience, and personal integrity.

Grade-based report cards are a “regularity of schooling”. Regularities of schooling are those features of school life whose utility we rarely question, such as age-based grade levels, starting school in September and ending in June, and assigning students grades based upon the quality of their work (Sarason). Regularities of schooling result from teachers being far too busy to stop and reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of the daily practices they inherit from the veteran teachers they replace and way too busy to envision promising alternatives.

The question, “Why are we doing this, this way?” is rarely asked, nor the natural follow up, “Is there a better way?” The unspoken answer, “Because it’s always been done this way.”

Similar limits of time result in parallel regularities of consumerism, church life, health care, marriage, and, I suspect, every sector of life and the economy. On those rare occasions when we have spare time to thoughtfully evaluate the usefulness of our personal and work life activities, we tend to fill the quiet empty spaces with television, internet surfing, and related noise/activity.

We aren’t disciplined enough to stop, reflect, envision, and thoughtfully implement promising alternatives to the regularities of our personal and work lives.

Why have grade-based report cards stood the test of time with hardly any variation despite radical changes in the world in which we live? What purposes do grade-based report cards serve? If they were to be radically redesigned, how might teaching and learning be revitalized? What form will the pushback against updated alternative report cards likely take? I begin answering these questions tomorrow.

File these ideas under “one good idea quickly implemented will fix things”. In actuality, reinventing schooling will require decades of intelligent, caring, hard working people piecing together good ideas and adapting them to differing contexts.

But I’ll play along with the conventional way of thinking. The “big idea” that I believe has more potential than the four listed above to serve as a catalyst for medium and long-term positive change? Radically redesigned report cards. More on that tomorrow.